it in the same spectacular spirit they
had displayed at the first apparition of the air-fleet. Only slowly was
this realisation of a capitulation suffused with the flush of passion,
only with reflection did they make any personal application. "WE have
surrendered!" came later; "in us America is defeated." Then they began
to burn and tingle.

The newspapers, which were issued about one in the morning contained no
particulars of the terms upon which New York had yielded--nor did
they give any intimation of the quality of the brief conflict that had
preceded the capitulation. The later issues remedied these deficiencies.
There came the explicit statement of the agreement to victual the
German airships, to supply the complement of explosives to replace
those employed in the fight and in the destruction of the North Atlantic
fleet, to pay the enormous ransom of forty million dollars, and to
surrender the flotilla in the East River. There came, too, longer and longer
descriptions of the smashing up of the City Hall and the Navy Yard, and
people began to realise faintly what those brief minutes of uproar had
meant. They read the tale of men blown to bits, of futile soldiers
in that localised battle fighting against hope amidst an indescribable
wreckage, of flags hauled down by weeping men. And these strange
nocturnal editions contained also the first brief cables from Europe
of the fleet disaster, the North Atlantic fleet for which New York had
always felt an especial pride and solicitude. Slowly, hour by hour, the
collective consciousness woke up, the tide of patriotic astonishment and
humiliation came floating in. America had come upon disaster; suddenly
New York discovered herself with amazement giving place to wrath
unspeakable, a conquered city under the hand of her conqueror.

As that fact shaped itself in the public mind, there sprang up, as
flames spring up, an angry repudiation. "No!" cried New York, waking in
the dawn. "No! I am not defeated. This is a dream." Before day broke
the swift American anger was running through all the city, through every
soul in those contagious millions. Before it took action, before it took
shape, the men in the airships could feel the gigantic insurgence of
emotion, as cattle and natural creatures feel, it is said, the coming
of an earthquake. The newspapers of the Knype group first gave the thing
words and a formula. "We do not agree," they said simply. "We have been
betrayed!" Men t